


Why We Fight

by Mynameisdoubleg



Category: BattleTech: MechWarrior, Classic Battletech (Tabletop RPG)
Genre: Military Science Fiction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-10
Updated: 2021-03-10
Packaged: 2021-03-16 23:33:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,042
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29957574
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mynameisdoubleg/pseuds/Mynameisdoubleg
Summary: The Battle for Tukayyid was a turning point in the Clan Invasion and the history of the Inner Sphere. We've seen what it looked like from the hilltop, but what was the view from the trenches?A platoon of infantry in the green Com Guard 50th Division realize they will serve as a shock absorber to take the first blow in the first battle of the battle, against the fearsome Clan Smoke Jaguar. Each of them must come to grips with this, and find some measure of meaning in their hopeless fight.





	Why We Fight

_Dinju Heights_

_Tukayyid_

_Free Rasalhague Republic_

_10 March, 3052_

The first shot he ever fired in anger killed a monkey.

It was a kind of lemur-tarsier hybrid with huge, round saucer eyes of liquid gold that looked into his when he pulled the trigger. There was no thought there, only animal incomprehension and futile rage as it slowly bled out in the middle of the street, its sides rapidly rising and falling as it fought for breath, never taking its eyes from his face. Poor dumb creature, incapable of understanding what was happening to it.

It had been somebody’s pet.

Acolyte I Gerard Hartmann’s unit had been assigned to search the houses for anyone who couldn’t—or wouldn’t—join the evacuation. Knock, identify yourself. If no answer, try the door. If locked, force it open. Check each room. If you find someone, explain the situation, ask them to leave. Render assistance if required. Be kind, patient and reassuring. If they refuse, enforce compliance.

It was hot and uncomfortable in the helmet and body armor, and the Mauser and Gray pulse rifle’s power pack was a steadily growing weight lodged between Hartmann’s shoulder blades.

What was he even doing here? Half a galaxy from home on St. Ives, among these people with their strange voices and strange clothes and strange smells, who glared at him with impotent fury for the crime of trying to save them from being roasted alive when the Clans came. Help defend the galaxy, the ComStar recruiter had said. It had sounded better than following his dad into the factory. ComStar needs you to save civilization, the recruiter had said. Did they, hell. A monkey could do this job.

The whole exercise seemed stupid, a waste of time. If people wanted to stay, let them stay. Their own funeral.

The main street behind Hartmann was choked with vehicles and people, standing in ragged, shuffling, bewildered lines, surrounded by white-clad Com Guards soldiers. The vehicles were a mishmash of civilian buses and minivans, Rasalhague Republic police and militia APCs. An Adept was standing on top of a civilian bus with a megaphone, trying through sheer volume to impose some order on the chaos below him. Remain calm, take only what you can carry, follow instructions, board your designated bus, do not push, remain calm, remain calm, remain calm.

The people of Dinju Heights blinked up in a mixture of incomprehension, disbelief and hostility. Thankfully, nothing worse. Someone in the crowd in Port Racice had shouted that it was a pogrom, they were being rounded up and shipped to death camps. In the riot that had followed, The Com Guards had shot four people, and another three dozen had been trampled to death.

Knock, knock. “Com Guards, Acolyte Gerard Hartmann. Is anybody home?” Open the door. Sweep the house. Note the family holos, the children’s toys scattered on the floor, the dirty dishes still piled in the sink. Empty. Move on.

Knock, knock. “Com Guards, Acolyte Gerard Hartmann. Is anybody home?”

The door opened, revealing a tall woman with a weary, time-worn face and resigned eyes. She said nothing, just looked at Hartmann and waited.

“Please leave the residence so we can evacuate you to safety,” Hartmann said by rote, following the prepared speech they’d all had to memorize.

“To where?” she asked, folding her arms across her chest.

“To an off-world transit camp and then eventual resettlement on Terra or a Republic world of your choice,” he replied. “This planet is about to become a battleground. It isn’t safe to remain.”

She shrugged. “When has it ever been safe? The Combine, the Commonwealth, the Ronin, we’ve been invaded more times than I can count.”

Hartmann felt himself sweating under his helmet, and fought the urge to wipe his brow. This wasn’t how the conversation was supposed to go. “Look, lady, this isn’t going to be some raid or skirmish. The Clans are coming. All of them. It’s going to be the biggest battle the galaxy has seen in centuries.”

“Why here?”

“Because, um.” Hartmann paused, frowned, tried to remember if he’d even been told. He gave up with a shrug. “Guess it was agreed.”

“Agreed? I don’t recall agreeing to anything.”

“Yeah, no, well. The Precentor Martial and the Clans. Look, if they win, they get to take Terra, that’s all I know.”

“So?”

“So that would be bad.”

“Would it? Worse than losing the home my family has lived in for 10 generations?”

Hartmann sighed. He got the feeling there was nothing he could say that would change this woman’s mind. “I’m not here to argue,” he said out loud. “Suit yourself.” Without looking he turned away, stamped across the front lawn, headed for the next house. He heard the door click shut behind him.

This wasn’t how it was supposed to go. The Com Guards were fighting for the freedom of the Inner Sphere, Focht had said. After centuries of waiting and watching as the Great Houses tore apart the galaxy, hundreds of years of sitting by and doing nothing, the Com Guards were finally going to step from the shadows and into daylight, as defenders of the innocent, protectors of liberty. This was supposed to be their moment of glory.

Knock, knock. “Com Guards. Acolyte Gerard Hartmann. Is anybody home?” No answer, but he heard something from the other side. Irregular, dull bumping or thumping sounds, sounded like footsteps. “Hello? Anybody home? Com Guards, Acolyte Gerard Hartmann. Please leave the residence so we can evacuate you to safety.”

He tried the door. It swung open, unresisting. From the darkness inside, something leaped. Hartmann had only the vaguest impression—a blur of angry brown fur, tiny fangs bared, snarling, outstretched hands ending in needle nails. He backpedaled out into the street, fumbling for his rifle, jerked it up, squeezing the trigger. A brilliant flash of laser fire, the snarl cut short, the shape tumbled to the road, rolled, lay there.

It was the size of a 6-year-old child, covered in soft brown fur, with a wide face taken up almost entirely by its staring, unblinking eyes. Panicked by the strangeness, at being abandoned by its owner, at the stranger suddenly entering its home. He’d hit it in the belly. Partly disemboweled it. It lay on its side, curled into a ball around the fatal wound, staring at him, glaring at him, gasping, hissing feebly.

Adept V Ajay King, commander of the Level I platoon, stormed up. “Blake’s bloody bum-fluff Hartmann, what the hell do you think you’re doing?” he bellowed. “Are you trying to start another riot?” Every face in the street was now turned their way, people pointing, muttering to one another.

“No sir. It ... it startled me.”

“Startled you? Startled? I’ll malking startle you, Acolyte. Get a grip!”

“Yes sir.”

“The Clans will be here in two months, Hartmann, and they’re going to do a damn sight more than startle you.” King pointed at the animal. “Well, for pity’s sake, don’t just leave it like that, Acolyte Startle-mann.”

“What, sir?”

King huffed in irritation, shook his head and aimed his rifle. There was a brilliant pulse of light, the smell of burnt fur, and the animal stopped moving. King lowered the rifle, gave Hartmann a long, hard look and then slowly shook his head.

What was he even doing here?

_Foothills below Dinju Pass_

_Tukayyid_

_Free Rasalhague Republic_

_21 April, 3052_

Pouring ferrocrete was brutally hard, hot work.

In the foothills below Dinju Heights, a Level III of infantry—a battalion—from the 50th Com Guards Division were turning the hillsides into fortresses. The hills themselves were being hollowed, honeycombed with a network of interlocking tunnels that linked together a series of ferrocrete-clad bunkers, strongpoints and gun emplacements. The ground before them was being bulldozed, trees torn down, rises and depressions leveled, giving the guns clear fields of fire. Obstacles and trenches were being built, and beyond them the fields were being sown with bands of pressure-sensitive vibromines.

At local midday, Hartmann’s squad sat in the sun outside their half-finished bunker, gamely chewing on iron-hard bars that were supposedly protein and energy supplements, passing around a bottle of something clear, alcoholic and decidedly non-regulation. They’d stripped down to their undershirts, both men and women alike, plastered with sweat against their bodies.

There were five others, besides Hartmann. Most, like him, recruited from the St. Ives Compact, where the 50th Division had been headquartered before redeploying to Tukayyid. They were the sons and daughters of farmers, miners and factory laborers, common as star dust—unlike the aristocratic militaries of the Great Houses—for whom service with ComStar had been the only route out of poverty and mindless drudgery. Vasyli Konev had the squashed nose and cauliflower ears of a boxer, and a surprisingly gentle smile. Clara Demeter had a bodybuilder physique, Baxter Tarquin, a thin pudding-like soft face and nearly no chin, Teela Shade shaved her head and smoked like a forest fire, and Jamal Cho moved with the languid grace of a dancer. The oldest, Vasyli, was 24 standard, while Clara had been in the Com Guards the longest, at 26 months. None had ever been in a battle before.

“Gerard’s the only one of us with a confirmed kill,” Vasyli joked.

The others laughed, and Hartmann tried to smile.

Teela reached over to ruffle his hair, which he had razored, like she had, down to millimeter length. “Oh lighten up, Hartmann. Wasn’t your fault.”

“Aw, is he still sad about his little monkey friend?” Vasyli again. He didn’t know when to stop, always went too far. “You should cuddle up with Teela chum, with that hairstyle she looks half-monkey already.”

Vasyli was right, but for the wrong reasons. Shooting the pet did bother him—mainly because it hadn’t bothered him enough. He’d shot the animal, he’d killed it, taken a life. And. Nothing. What should have been monumental instead felt inconsequential. Nothing had changed. None of it mattered. Life went on, only with one less golden-eyed monkey in it. He wanted to smile, but couldn’t.

So Hartmann ignored him; Teela threw Vasyli a rude gesture. “Better a monkey than a pig.”

“Drop it, Vasyli,” said Clara, and surprisingly, he did. Clara’s voice had that effect on people. Vasyli gave an it-doesn’t-matter-to-me shrug, took another swig of the bottle and passed it to Jamal.

“What’s the plan, do you think?” Baxter wondered out loud, trying to change the subject. He stood at the top of a half-finished wall, eyes shielded against the sun, looking down at the plains below.

“What does it matter?” Jamal said dismissively. “We just have to follow orders. We’re soldiers, not generals, Acolytes, not Precentors.”

“Acolytes, not robots,” Baxter countered.

“Well, brood on it then, if that makes you feel better.” Jamal rolled his eyes.

“If we’re going to fight, maybe kill somebody, maybe get hurt, maybe die, I just want to know what it was for,” Baxter said, undaunted. “I want it to mean something.”

“What it means,” Clara began, “is that—aw shit, I mean, ah-ten-SHUN!”

She jumped up, saluting. The others looked around, and saw Adept Ajay King at the bunker entrance. Hartmann, Teela and the others bolted to their feet. Jamal quickly slid the bottle behind him as nonchalantly as he could.

“At ease,” King waved at them as he walked closer. “Don’t hide the hooch, Jamal, pass it around if there’s still some left.” He looked tired, slightly stooped, and there was little power in his slight smile. “Unity knows I could do with a drink right about now.”

“Has Precentor Esau been giving you a hard time, sir?” Vasyli struggled to put some lightness in his tone. The others exchanged glances, shrugs, frowns.

“Not quite. But, ah. There’s news. I’ve been at a Level III staff meeting this morning,” King began, running an aimless hand through his tangled black hair. “I heard what you were talking about, and might have an answer for you. We’ve received our orders. I know we’ll be up against, and what the strategy will be.” He hesitated. Wordlessly, Jamal offered him the bottle. King took it, looked at it without seeing.

“Sir?” Hartmann prodded.

“Can’t be that bad, sir,” Vasyli joked. “You look like Death himself is about to ride over that hill.”

King smiled without humor. “Not Death, but close enough: Clan Smoke Jaguar,” he said. “The most brutal, ruthless and powerful Clan there is. The ones that nuked Edo City. They’ll be landing here first, heading for Dinju Heights. We’ll be the buffer, a shock absorber, the first line of defense. Our job is to delay the Jaguars long enough for the two-ninety-nine and three-twenty-three divisions to get a fix on their strength and positions, and then hammer them when they try to move on the city.”

That wiped the smile from Vasyli’s face, made Jamal stand up straighter, seemed to dim the sun overhead and even make the air feel heavier. They all looked out over the hills a moment, picturing them crawling with war machines, faster, better armored and armed than anything the Inner Sphere could produce, manned by genetic super-soldiers bred for war, tested in battle, crowned with victory. Against—what? Untried, untested nobodies, average in every area save experience, in which they were sorely lacking.

Hartmann gestured towards the half-finished bunker, with its meter-thick walls and hedgehog bristles of gun emplacements, and beyond it, to the ferrocrete obstacles, trenches and tangle wire beyond, to the rows of men in the distance, seeding the ground with explosives. “Do you think it will work?”

King said nothing for a while. He raised the bottle to his lips, took a long swallow, and when he put it down, he stared at his feet. Without looking up, he shook his head.

Hartmann nodded to himself. Well, of course. It had been a foolish question. Could they hold? No. No, of course they couldn’t. The single biggest indicator that Precentor Martial Focht didn’t expect the first line to hold was that he’d assigned it to the 50th Division. You didn’t put your greenest, least experienced unit on the first line of defense if you expected those defenses to hold. It was like King had said, they were a shock absorber, something to be abraded, consumed as it bled away the enemy’s energy. And then discarded.

“So it’s for nothing then?” Baxter asked.

“Maybe,” King shrugged, talking to his feet. “Ah, I don’t know. I’m no seer, nobody who fights ever knows if their sacrifice will be worth it or not. Maybe we’ll draw their sting and leave an opening for the rest of the 5th Army to wipe them out. Or maybe not. Maybe I’m sending my platoon to die for nothing.” He looked up, slowly looked around the circle, meeting their eyes, a slight, apologetic smile on his face. “Someone has to be the first line of defense, turns out that someone is us. It’s a rotten deal, no mistake. What can I say? It’s a rotten galaxy. Wish I could offer you more, but all I’ve got it this: If the galaxy is rotten, then the only reason it isn’t even worse is because, from time to time, there are people willing to fight to make it better, even if it might be for nothing.”

“Nobody asked me if I wanted to sacrifice myself for the Inner Sphere,” Teela said bitterly. “My parents were political prisoners on Brighton, before independence, before the Fourth Succession War. We’ve already sacrificed enough.”

Hartmann remembered the woman in the house in Dinju Heights, with the same stubborn, resentful question. Why me?

“No, nobody asked you,” King agreed. “Nobody asked any of us. Look, when the shooting starts, nobody’s going to notice if any of you just put your head down and try to find someplace to hide. I’ll look the other way. But if the Clans are going to be stopped, they’re going to be stopped here. And it’s got to be us because nobody else can do it.”

Clara grunted, nodded. Her calm acceptance was steadying, felt like an anchor they could cling to. “We knew what the job was when we signed up, sir,” she said, and reached over to King, patting him heavily on the shoulder. “None of us ever expected to be heroes. Even heroes need help though, even if it’s just someone to take the first punch for them. We can do that. We can. We can take a punch.”

The silence that followed was broken by Teela snorting, shaking her head and walking away.

Nothing had changed, Hartmann thought. It was afternoon now, the golden light slowly dying, but the same sun still shone, earth movers and bulldozers still chugged and grunted on the slopes below, men still dug and swore at each construction site, nothing had changed, yet everything felt different. He might die—no, check that, he probably would die—in a matter of weeks. Whatever King or Clara might say, he’d be as dead as that stupid, dumb animal in the street, for about as good a reason.

Head bowed, hands in pockets, he followed after Teela.

_Foothills below Dinju Pass_

_Tukayyid_

_Free Rasalhague Republic_

_30 April, 3052_

Hartmann was on sentry duty outside the bunker entrance that night, though there was nothing to guard against. Not yet. The invisible wind traced its empty fingers through the waist-high grass, carving paths of nothing that faded, submerged into shadow, and were gone. The skies were clear, making it easy to pinpoint the new constellation of lights that had appeared among the stars.

“Pretty,” said Teela, stepping from the entrance, an unlit cigarette dangling from her lips.

“Drive flares,” Hartmann sighed. “The Clans. Decelerating on approach.”

“Well, they’re punctual. Give them that.” Teela cupped the cigarette, lit it, drew in and let it go in a long, curling, half-seen breath.

“Shouldn’t you be asleep?” Hartmann asked her.

Teela’s mouth twisted into something that was half-smile, half-grimace. “Clara has decided this might be her last night among the living, and is making the most of it with—”

“Vasyli?”

She looked at him sidelong. “What? No. Baxter, of course.”

“Ah, I just thought ... nothing, I guess. So you came out here for some peace and quiet?”

Teela grinned, placed a hand on his chest and gave him a suggestive wink. “Well, if you can be quiet, it doesn’t have to be too peaceful.”

Hartmann put his hand over hers, fingers curled around her palm, but left it there. “What do you want, Teela?” he asked gently.

Her smile faded, and she retrieved her hand from his grip. Took another drag of her cigarette before answering. “What do any of us want, Hearty-boy? We’re the first generation born in St. Ives since it split from the Confederation. We want a life freer than our parents ever knew. We want a life without some Davion puppet Duchess or Duke trying to tell us who we are or what we can be. We want a life that means something. We want a life, Hartmann. We want a life.”

Hartmann nodded, looking back up at the sky, at the lights, at the death they carried. “I know what you mean.”

“What do I want? I wanted to say good-bye, Hartmann.”

Hartmann blinked, looked down, and found Teela smiling sadly up at him.

“Desertion?”

“Survival,” she said. “A life.” A small shrug. “I thought I could make slipping by you more pleasant. But this way works, too.” She hesitated. “Or.” Another pause. “Or you could come with me?”

He was tempted. Unity, he was tempted. There was death in the sky that night. Not some abstract, far in the future death, but his death, all their deaths, arrowing straight towards them, coming for them, on a direct collision course. At best they could blunt that arrow a little, slow it a fraction, and even that little would cost them everything.

He didn’t know. Poor, frightened, confused little monkey. He didn’t know what the right thing to do was. Run, like Teela said, or dig your heels in, like the woman in Dinju Heights, knowing it was futile, but knowing you had to.

He wanted a life, too. A free one, a meaningful one. And with that, he knew what he had to do.

He took a breath, and let it go.

“Good-bye, Teela.”

She inhaled sharply, lowered her head and then nodded to herself. “Right,” she said. “Well.” She reached up, patted his cheek awkwardly, gave him a quick kiss. “Try not to get yourself killed.”

“I’ll do what I can,” he agreed, “You too.” Impulsively, he gave her a hug and only let her go with effort. He watched her go, striding through the tall grass, down the hill and away from the bunker, out of his life. He kept watching until she faded, submerged into shadow, gone.

Adept King emerged a few hours later. Smiled and returned Hartmann’s salute. Hartmann opened his mouth to speak, but King cut him off: “Teela’s gone then.”

“You knew?”

“To be honest, I thought you’d go with her.” King turned his face upwards, scanning the skies. His eyebrows twitched, but otherwise he was impassive. Finally, he said: “I’m glad you stayed, Hartmann.”

Hartmann wished he could say the same.

_Foothills below Dinju Pass_

_Tukayyid_

_Free Rasalhague Republic_

_1 May, 3052_

“They’re coming in fast,” King murmured, half to himself as he peered through the field glasses. He fiddled with the magnification as the rest of the squad waited tensely behind him. “Combat drop, right on top of Mangold’s battalion. They’re going to try to hit hard and fast, before we can regroup and counterattack.”

The completed bunker was a low and dark, semicircular room, with the curved wall bisected at eye level by the long gash of a firing slit. Clara and Baxter manned a 40mm autocannon whose carriage was wedged into the center of the room, while Hartmann and Vasyli crouched over long, boxy semi-portable support lasers. Jamal huddled by the communications equipment at the back of the room, while King’s field glasses were a crude kind of submarine periscope, made up of thoroughly low-tech eye pieces linked by a steel column to lenses that poked from the crest of the hill, several meters above their heads.

Hartmann squinted up through the gun slit in front of him. The sky was a sheet of grey, peppered with black dots, each trailing a wispy, white contrail. Bigger dots were just starting to appear from the haze now, riding long spikes of orange-red flame. DropShips. He could hear the throaty grumble of their thrusters, echoing off the Dinju mountains. New sounds now as the dots fell lower and flickering lights rose to meet them—the crackle of particle fire, thudding autocannon, hissing salvoes of missile fire.

“Mangold is engaging,” King reported. “Get closer, you idiot, closer. Grab their belt buckle, get in their faces. Closer, closer. Closer.” He slapped his thigh in rage and frustration. “Closer, before the DropShips ground.”

Unaided, Hartmann couldn’t make out anything of the battle. Drifting smoke, shot through with lightning flashes. Sounds overlapped until they became indistinguishable, just a constant, distant ocean storm of sound, rising to a tsunami crescendo, before suddenly petering out, leaving only echoes.

King’s shoulders slumped and he turned from the field glasses. “Jamal,” he said. “Get me the Division HQ. Fire mission, grid two-six-zero. BattleMechs inbound.”

“Artillery?” Jamal frowned. “Sir, won’t we risk hitting our own guys?”

“No. That’s not a factor. Not anymore.”

Jamal’s mouth opened, then closed. He gulped in understanding, and grabbed the radio headset, fumbling for it, equipment rattling as his hands shook. “Upsilon-Sigma Home, this is Iota-Tau Seven. Requesting fire mission ...”

They were close enough for Hartmann to see now, shadows stalking deliberately from the smoke and flames, hunched and twisted, monster shapes. Even among these giants, the one in the lead was a behemoth, a walking battleship bristling with an arsenal of lasers and cannons and missiles. It scattered a handful of embers, bright coals that dropped to the ground and then leaped forward, too light to trigger the mines, arcing easily over the trenches, wires and barriers the Com Guards had erected.

“Hurry up,” Hartmann whispered to himself, cursing the artillery, the slow-moving, lazy SOBs, where the hell was the artillery fire, those incompetent, oh hurry-hurry-hurry, moronic—

The difference with artillery was you could hear the shells coming. That high-pitched wail as they fell to earth. It didn’t help much. You just had those long seconds of dread, useful for little but praying the gunners hadn’t screwed up and aimed too short. Nothing to do but wait.

The shells pounded the ground like a kettle drum, making the ground tremble beneath Hartmann’s feet. Followed a second later by an ear-shattering blast of sound, and a blinding, choking wave of dust and smoke as the shockwave smacked into the hillside. Mountains of earth were blown into the air, ten, twenty, fifty meters, he didn’t know. The lead Smoke Jaguar BattleMechs disappeared in a mushrooming pillar of smoke.

“Oh, that got him,” King crowed, fist-pumping the air. “Direct hit with a Blake-blessed one-fifty-five. Oh, that is one declawed pussy cat. Take that and shove it up your test tube, lab rat. Ha ha! Who’s next? There’s more where that came—” King’s smile vanished. He stepped back from the viewer, blinked hard, looked again. Then swore, and turned away in disgust. “Here they come.”

The BattleMechs still stood amid the smoking craters, practically unharmed, with no damage greater than a scuffed paint job. Hartmann knuckled away fierce, despairing tears, and then there was no time for regret or fear and he focused on the sleek hurtling shapes of the Smoke Jaguar Elementals.

They were fast, so fast. Hartmann fired, waited for the support laser to recharge, fired. Too low, a miss, now too high, the emerald green beam carving only air. Wait for the green charge light, fire. Cycle. Fire. A hit—a solid hit. The beam struck a flying Elemental near the waist, swatted it from the sky and sent it tumbling, bouncing across the ground and sliding into a ferrocrete barrier. Hartmann’s shout of triumph was cut short as the Elemental sprang back to its feet and rocketed up, too high for his gun to track, arcing directly over the hill the bunker was buried into.

“Target the lead ’Mech,” King ordered. “Fire, fire, fire!”

The great, shark-nosed colossus was barely 500 meters away. Clara aimed and fired a roaring burst with the autocannon, spitting a snaking stream of glowing tracers and shells that struck the ground at the BattleMech’s feet, then worked their way up, sparking detonations across the machine’s lower leg, knee and hip.

Without slowing, the BattleMech aimed its left arm gunpod almost negligently at their bunker. Five weapons fired. Autocannon shells pounded the bunker’s face, lasers made the walls glow, sag, begin to melt and run.

One lucky shot hit the gun slit. Not full-on, a glancing blow, perhaps half of it spent its fury on the bunker wall, but the other half the beam penetrated inside. It filled the bunker with nova-bright light and blistering heat. It missed the autocannon, but caught Baxter, standing beside it. He was instantly vaporized, there one moment, nothing but an expanding detonation of flesh and bone the next.

Hartmann was knocked sideways, felt as though someone had kicked him in the ribs. He reached down, felt something lodged in the body armor there, pulled it free and brought it up to his eyes. A shard of bone. He instantly dropped it.

Clara was on her knees, screaming. King trying to pull her to her feet, shouting in her ear. Jamal had one hand clapped to his ear, desperately yelling into the comms, pleading for backup, for support, for rescue. From across the room Vasyli met Hartmann’s eyes, and they nodded together, grimly resigned.

He kept firing, even though he knew, he’d seen how futile it was, how the enemy just shrugged off even a direct hit. Outside was chaos. Laser and cannon fire converged from every direction, so thick and fast they seemed to merge into a single solid sheet of lightning that blasted across the sky, the earth jumped and danced as mines exploded, platoons of hover, wheeled and tracked armor emerged from behind the hills and threw themselves at the BattleMechs from every direction, only to erupt in fireballs, pierced through by rail guns or particle cannon. Hartmann couldn’t even see what he was shooting at. He wasn’t sure it even mattered. Fire, cycle, green light, fire.

There was another explosion—from above and behind them. A cloud of concrete dust and shrapnel billowed into the bunker from the entrance tunnel. Hartmann staggered, slammed against the wall by the force of the blast, losing his grip on the support laser. Coughing, gasping, ears ringing, he reached for his pulse rifle, couldn’t hold it, numb fingers wouldn’t work, rifle clattering to the ground.

A figure blocked the bunker entrance. Grotesquely swollen and misshapen, with a single, gold-tinted strip for an eye, ape-like arms, one ending in the massive maw of a laser, the other in a cruel claw. From the claw’s wrist jutted the muzzle of a machinegun. Hartmann tried to shout a warning, tried to get his rifle up, but his body wouldn’t respond, wouldn’t move, and the machinegun was coming up just as Jamal turned around.

At point-blank range, the burst blew Jamal off his feet. Lithe, dancer Jamal, flying through the air. Almost like he was turning a somersault, instead of being ripped apart as heavy-caliber bullets punched gaping holes in him, picked him up and flung him against the autocannon, where he flopped to the ground in a broken, bloody heap. Vasyli, still turning, caught half the burst, instinctively clapped a hand to the wound and realized the hole was nearly as big as his palm. He stood blinking in incomprehension for a second, smiled, almost rueful, and crumpled to the ground.

King had his service pistol out, held in both hands, and emptied the clip into the thing’s chest. Bullets pinged and sparked off its breastplate without effect. A ricochet flew by Hartmann’s face.

Clara. It was Clara who saved them. Clara flung herself at the monster. Nothing in her hands but a survival knife. Screaming defiance, teeth bared, though they couldn’t hear, still deafened after the machinegun burst. The claw caught her in midair, shook her like a rag doll so hard they could almost see the bones in her neck snap, tossed her aside like an unwanted toy.

The laser arm pointed at the autocannon. An explosion in such a small, cramped room would kill them all.

Clara’s charge did have one effect though. It gave Hartmann time to find his feet. Retrieve his pulse rifle. Unnoticed, ignored, he stumbled and lurched towards the Elemental and jammed the barrel up against the thing’s golden faceplate. Hartmann had a moment, a brief flash, where he saw inside, saw the face of the man inside, met his eyes—golden-tinged by the visor—and saw hate there, rage, the eyes of a young man who’d sworn to himself that he wouldn’t die for nothing, that his life would matter and count for something. The claw was swinging around to bat Hartmann away.

The laser pulses melted through the ferroglass visor, burned into the face behind it until nothing human remained. The body tipped backwards, the right arm flew up. One last muscle spasm, a command from beyond the grave, caused it to fire. A lance of blinding light carved a glowing line into the roof of the bunker. Ferrocrete turned gold, then white-hot and exploded, bringing the roof down on top of them.

Something struck Hartmann’s helmet, the light disappeared and there was nothing but darkness.

Later, how much later he didn’t know, there was light. Pale and dust-filled and it made him want to vomit, but nonetheless, light. Hartmann forced open sore, gummy eyes and found himself lying across the Elemental’s feet in the corridor just outside the bunker room. His mouth tasted of dust and blood and there was a hollow, ocean seashell ringing in his ears that wouldn’t go away. He tried to sit up and the view spun so bad he really did vomit.

The light was coming through a long gash where the roof of the bunker had been. It was bowed inwards now, open above a wide, low pyramid of ferrocrete rubble and earth that nearly filled the chamber. Only the top and barrel of the autocannon poked out. Someone was moaning, irregular but persistent, and every once in a while the voice stopped and asked for water.

Leaning against the corridor wall for support, Hartmann pulled himself to his feet, blinked his eyes and willed them to focus. He tottered back into the bunker, looking for the source of the sound.

It was Adept King, buried to the waist in the rubble. Hartmann crouched down, heaved and pushed, managed to lever the blocks of ferrocrete from King’s legs. One leg looked twisted, broken, the ankle on the other leg had been crushed. Hartmann wiped his hands, took King by the wrists and began to drag him, as slowly and carefully as he could, out of the bunker, down the access corridor, though the doorway and up into open air. He lay King down by the entrance and fell to the ground beside him, exhausted.

“Water,” King said woozily. Although his eyes were open, they were unfocused, unseeing, shorn of intelligence or understanding. Half his face a mask of dark, clotted blood. “Water.”

Hartmann shook his head, then realized King probably couldn’t see. “There’s no water, sir.”

“Damn,” King whispered. “You sure? Anyone else have water?”

Hartmann looked around, half-heartedly. Turning his neck and moving his head made the pounding worse. “There is nobody else, sir. Just us.”

“Damn,” King repeated. One hand fumbled for Hartmann, clutched at his shirt, leaving black and red stains. “Did we do it? Did we hold them for long enough?”

Hartmann patted the hand awkwardly. “I don’t know sir.”

There was nothing moving in the hills as far as Hartmann could see, only the distant candlelight of flickering fires and a brown-grey haze of smoke. Hillsides had been shattered, cracked open like eggs, spilling shards of ferrocrete and half-melted field guns. Moon craters had been blown in the hillsides from explosions, their perimeters littered with the blackened, steaming, broken bones of tanks, hovercraft, aerospace fighters and BattleMechs. He had no idea what type they were or who they belonged to or what it all meant.

“Water.”

“We’ll have to wait to be picked up, sir. A medical team or patrol is bound to come by.”

Hartmann turned around, looked up towards the pass, and thought he could make out movement there. Distant flashes of light. Which could mean anything, Com Guards ambush, Smoke Jaguar victory, something else entirely, though whatever it was, it probably meant help would not be arriving anytime soon.

Well, they’d done what they promised—absorbed the initial impact, taken that first punch. In its own small way, that felt like victory enough. Hartmann wondered about Teela, about the woman in Dinju Heights, and silently wished them both luck. He hoped they’d survive—that was the only kind of victory common soldiers or civilians would ever see.

“Water, Hartmann. Water. So damn thirsty. Water.”

“Yes, sir. Sorry, sir. I’ll have another look,” Hartmann said without much hope, and headed back inside. Immediately, he saw it was futile. Their equipment and supplies were buried under too much rubble, the pieces were too big and heavy to move by hand, it was all too much for just one man.

He did find his pulse rifle under a smaller slab of ferrocrete, but when he pulled it out he saw that the barrel was flattened and bent. Useless. He let the gun fall back where he had found it, and clambered back out of the bunker again.

When Hartmann returned to King, the Adept was already dead.


End file.
